Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Dell XPS16 for Christmas?
On Friday 20 November 2009 16:43:20 Paul Hartman wrote: I would also check out the Asus G51J-A1 which is a similar set-up to the Dell. It seems to be a good package for the price too. It seems like a well priced machine which comes with two hard drives! That may consume more battery power than the single drive Dell. Unfortunately, this Asus model is not yet available in the UK and I bet that when they release it here it will be quite expensive. Other than that the choice comes down to Nvidia for Asus Vs ATI for Dell. -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Dell XPS16 for Christmas?
On Sunday 15 November 2009 19:39:40 Mick wrote: I have been thinking of buying this laptop and was looking at the Gentoo Wiki which shows relatively good hardware compatibility, except for the radeon card which is now an older offering: http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Dell_Studio_XPS_16 The current spec on the UK Dell website shows 1GB ATI® Radeon™ HD 4670 (see below). PROCESSOR:Intel® Core™ i7 Processor 720QM (1.60Ghz, 6MB cache) LCD: Black Leather back cover : 15.6 (inch) Truelife 1080p Full HD WLED Edge to Edge Display MEMORY: 4096MB 1333MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM [2x2048] HARD DRIVE: 500GB (7,200rpm) Free Fall Sensor Hard Drive PRIMARY BATTERY: 9-cell 85Whr Lithium Ion battery OPTICAL DRIVE:Internal Blu-Ray ROM (Blu-Ray read, DVD and CD read Write) Optical Drive GRAPHICS CARD:1GB ATI® Radeon™ HD 4670 graphics card WIRELESS CONNECTIVITY:Dell Wireless 1397 Mini Card (802.11 b/g) BLUETOOTH:Dell Wireless 370 Bluetooth Module According to these links the RadeonHD driver is experimental: http://wiki.x.org/wiki/radeon http://wiki.x.org/wiki/radeonhd%3Aexperimental_3D Does anyone have experience with this driver, or better yet, this laptop? Shall I buy or shall I shy away from it? Most Dell-laptops actually work quite nicely with Linux, however, be aware that DELL has issues with the harddrives they supply. I've seen 6 different recent DELL-laptops with crashed harddrives in the past 1.5 years. These laptops were handled carefully. Response from Dell was: Sorry, we shipped a wrong batch I would suggest frequent backups of important files and/or the harddrive swapped for a more reliable model. -- Joost
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Dell XPS16 for Christmas?
2009/11/20 J. Roeleveld jo...@antarean.org: On Sunday 15 November 2009 19:39:40 Mick wrote: I have been thinking of buying this laptop and was looking at the Gentoo Wiki which shows relatively good hardware compatibility, except for the radeon card which is now an older offering: http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Dell_Studio_XPS_16 The current spec on the UK Dell website shows 1GB ATI® Radeon™ HD 4670 (see below). PROCESSOR: Intel® Core™ i7 Processor 720QM (1.60Ghz, 6MB cache) LCD: Black Leather back cover : 15.6 (inch) Truelife 1080p Full HD WLED Edge to Edge Display MEMORY: 4096MB 1333MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM [2x2048] HARD DRIVE: 500GB (7,200rpm) Free Fall Sensor Hard Drive PRIMARY BATTERY: 9-cell 85Whr Lithium Ion battery OPTICAL DRIVE: Internal Blu-Ray ROM (Blu-Ray read, DVD and CD read Write) Optical Drive GRAPHICS CARD: 1GB ATI® Radeon™ HD 4670 graphics card WIRELESS CONNECTIVITY: Dell Wireless 1397 Mini Card (802.11 b/g) BLUETOOTH: Dell Wireless 370 Bluetooth Module According to these links the RadeonHD driver is experimental: http://wiki.x.org/wiki/radeon http://wiki.x.org/wiki/radeonhd%3Aexperimental_3D Does anyone have experience with this driver, or better yet, this laptop? Shall I buy or shall I shy away from it? Most Dell-laptops actually work quite nicely with Linux, however, be aware that DELL has issues with the harddrives they supply. I've seen 6 different recent DELL-laptops with crashed harddrives in the past 1.5 years. These laptops were handled carefully. Response from Dell was: Sorry, we shipped a wrong batch I would suggest frequent backups of important files and/or the harddrive swapped for a more reliable model. Thanks guys - the hard drive story sounds scary! Was there a particular batch of a particular hard drive manufacturer that was suspect here? -- Regards, Mick
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Dell XPS16 for Christmas?
On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 6:16 AM, Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/11/20 J. Roeleveld jo...@antarean.org: On Sunday 15 November 2009 19:39:40 Mick wrote: I have been thinking of buying this laptop and was looking at the Gentoo Wiki which shows relatively good hardware compatibility, except for the radeon card which is now an older offering: http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Dell_Studio_XPS_16 The current spec on the UK Dell website shows 1GB ATI® Radeon™ HD 4670 (see below). PROCESSOR:Intel® Core™ i7 Processor 720QM (1.60Ghz, 6MB cache) LCD: Black Leather back cover : 15.6 (inch) Truelife 1080p Full HD WLED Edge to Edge Display MEMORY: 4096MB 1333MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM [2x2048] HARD DRIVE: 500GB (7,200rpm) Free Fall Sensor Hard Drive PRIMARY BATTERY: 9-cell 85Whr Lithium Ion battery OPTICAL DRIVE:Internal Blu-Ray ROM (Blu-Ray read, DVD and CD read Write) Optical Drive GRAPHICS CARD:1GB ATI® Radeon™ HD 4670 graphics card WIRELESS CONNECTIVITY:Dell Wireless 1397 Mini Card (802.11 b/g) BLUETOOTH:Dell Wireless 370 Bluetooth Module According to these links the RadeonHD driver is experimental: http://wiki.x.org/wiki/radeon http://wiki.x.org/wiki/radeonhd%3Aexperimental_3D Does anyone have experience with this driver, or better yet, this laptop? Shall I buy or shall I shy away from it? Most Dell-laptops actually work quite nicely with Linux, however, be aware that DELL has issues with the harddrives they supply. I've seen 6 different recent DELL-laptops with crashed harddrives in the past 1.5 years. These laptops were handled carefully. Response from Dell was: Sorry, we shipped a wrong batch I would suggest frequent backups of important files and/or the harddrive swapped for a more reliable model. Thanks guys - the hard drive story sounds scary! Was there a particular batch of a particular hard drive manufacturer that was suspect here? I think you could mention any brand of hard drive and people would have horror stories about it. Hard drives are like airplanes; they tend to fail spectacularly. The good news is that if you had to choose one part of a laptop to go bad, the hard drive would probably be the easiest piece to replace (or maybe RAM). Certainly better than a trend of failing display panels! I've owned a couple Dell computers personally and overseen dozens of them at work and they are generally good value and perform without issues. Their business division's customer service (at least a few years ago) was pretty good, they would send someone to our office the next morning to fix the problem. Dell Home, on the other hand, at least in the US, seems to outsource most (all?) of their email/chat/phone support overseas to non-native English-speakers and if you've got a question or request that's not on their script, save yourself the headache and don't even bother asking them for it. Anything they tell you is just the same info you can read on the Dell support website, assuming you can break through the language barrier enough for them to understand what you're asking in the first place. And if you bought a Dell product from a store and not from Dell directly, forget it. You don't exist if you don't have a Dell order number. That being said, the XPS 16 looks like a good value to me (based on the US pricing), and a pretty sweet laptop especially with the blu-ray and WLED display. And AFAIK is one of the only laptops on the market today available with an RGBLED display (at least in the US, $175 extra for the privilege). I would also check out the Asus G51J-A1 which is a similar set-up to the Dell. It seems to be a good package for the price too.
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Dell XPS16 for Christmas?
On Friday 20 November 2009 17:43:20 Paul Hartman wrote: On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 6:16 AM, Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/11/20 J. Roeleveld jo...@antarean.org: On Sunday 15 November 2009 19:39:40 Mick wrote: I have been thinking of buying this laptop and was looking at the Gentoo Wiki which shows relatively good hardware compatibility, except for the radeon card which is now an older offering: http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Dell_Studio_XPS_16 The current spec on the UK Dell website shows 1GB ATI® Radeon™ HD 4670 (see below). PROCESSOR:Intel® Core™ i7 Processor 720QM (1.60Ghz, 6MB cache) LCD: Black Leather back cover : 15.6 (inch) Truelife 1080p Full HD WLED Edge to Edge Display MEMORY: 4096MB 1333MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM [2x2048] HARD DRIVE: 500GB (7,200rpm) Free Fall Sensor Hard Drive PRIMARY BATTERY: 9-cell 85Whr Lithium Ion battery OPTICAL DRIVE:Internal Blu-Ray ROM (Blu-Ray read, DVD and CD read Write) Optical Drive GRAPHICS CARD:1GB ATI® Radeon™ HD 4670 graphics card WIRELESS CONNECTIVITY:Dell Wireless 1397 Mini Card (802.11 b/g) BLUETOOTH:Dell Wireless 370 Bluetooth Module According to these links the RadeonHD driver is experimental: http://wiki.x.org/wiki/radeon http://wiki.x.org/wiki/radeonhd%3Aexperimental_3D Does anyone have experience with this driver, or better yet, this laptop? Shall I buy or shall I shy away from it? Most Dell-laptops actually work quite nicely with Linux, however, be aware that DELL has issues with the harddrives they supply. I've seen 6 different recent DELL-laptops with crashed harddrives in the past 1.5 years. These laptops were handled carefully. Response from Dell was: Sorry, we shipped a wrong batch I would suggest frequent backups of important files and/or the harddrive swapped for a more reliable model. Thanks guys - the hard drive story sounds scary! Was there a particular batch of a particular hard drive manufacturer that was suspect here? I think you could mention any brand of hard drive and people would have horror stories about it. Hard drives are like airplanes; they tend to fail spectacularly. The good news is that if you had to choose one part of a laptop to go bad, the hard drive would probably be the easiest piece to replace (or maybe RAM). Certainly better than a trend of failing display panels! In this case they were Seagates, but as mentioned, all manufacturers make mistakes. The last Dell that had a crashed harddrive (after 3 months of use, 2 weeks ago) had a Seagate - ST9160823ASG. I've owned a couple Dell computers personally and overseen dozens of them at work and they are generally good value and perform without issues. Their business division's customer service (at least a few years ago) was pretty good, they would send someone to our office the next morning to fix the problem. These were for a business customer (A big one) and all Dell offered was sending replacement drives to the seperate users' homes or their nearest offices. I would also check out the Asus G51J-A1 which is a similar set-up to the Dell. It seems to be a good package for the price too. Getting into the preferences of brands here, so I will refrain from commenting. One thing to still keep in mind, Asus does not really care about Linux users either. Is there a decent laptop-brand that actually does? -- Joost
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Dell XPS16 for Christmas?
On 20 Nov 2009, at 17:33, J. Roeleveld wrote: ... I've owned a couple Dell computers personally and overseen dozens of them at work and they are generally good value and perform without issues. Their business division's customer service (at least a few years ago) was pretty good, they would send someone to our office the next morning to fix the problem. These were for a business customer (A big one) and all Dell offered was sending replacement drives to the seperate users' homes or their nearest offices. Dell offer different service levels to their business customers. One site of mine has just the bronze - I assume this is an upgrade over the basic, because even though they offer silver gold, the bronze gets someone on site the next day to fit the replacement parts. From the EXCELLENT service the one time we've called Dell on this, I doubt very much that they would say sorry, it has to be the company's registered office and refuse to make the visit to the location at which the hardware was actually deployed. In fact, they had this customer's previous office location on file when we called them, the office the customer had moved out of 2 years before, and they were happy to accommodate us at the new one. Of course, this does you no good at all regarding installation / customisation of the operating system, but surely it is unrealistic to expect that? Hard-drives fail, if you don't plan for that then you're asking for it. Stroller.
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Dell XPS16 for Christmas?
On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 12:39 PM, Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com wrote: I have been thinking of buying this laptop and was looking at the Gentoo Wiki which shows relatively good hardware compatibility, except for the radeon card which is now an older offering: http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Dell_Studio_XPS_16 The current spec on the UK Dell website shows 1GB ATI® Radeon™ HD 4670 (see below). PROCESSOR: Intel® Core™ i7 Processor 720QM (1.60Ghz, 6MB cache) LCD:Black Leather back cover : 15.6 (inch) Truelife 1080p Full HD WLED Edge to Edge Display MEMORY: 4096MB 1333MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM [2x2048] HARD DRIVE: 500GB (7,200rpm) Free Fall Sensor Hard Drive PRIMARY BATTERY:9-cell 85Whr Lithium Ion battery OPTICAL DRIVE: Internal Blu-Ray ROM (Blu-Ray read, DVD and CD read Write) Optical Drive GRAPHICS CARD: 1GB ATI® Radeon™ HD 4670 graphics card WIRELESS CONNECTIVITY: Dell Wireless 1397 Mini Card (802.11 b/g) BLUETOOTH: Dell Wireless 370 Bluetooth Module According to these links the RadeonHD driver is experimental: http://wiki.x.org/wiki/radeon http://wiki.x.org/wiki/radeonhd%3Aexperimental_3D Does anyone have experience with this driver, or better yet, this laptop? Shall I buy or shall I shy away from it? I don't have one (I wish!) but after a quick googling it looks like ATI Catalyst drivers support the graphics chip and the wireless is a BCM4312 chipset. I think the rest of it should be pretty standard stuff.
[gentoo-user] [OT] Dell XPS16 for Christmas?
I have been thinking of buying this laptop and was looking at the Gentoo Wiki which shows relatively good hardware compatibility, except for the radeon card which is now an older offering: http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Dell_Studio_XPS_16 The current spec on the UK Dell website shows 1GB ATI® Radeon™ HD 4670 (see below). PROCESSOR: Intel® Core™ i7 Processor 720QM (1.60Ghz, 6MB cache) LCD:Black Leather back cover : 15.6 (inch) Truelife 1080p Full HD WLED Edge to Edge Display MEMORY: 4096MB 1333MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM [2x2048] HARD DRIVE: 500GB (7,200rpm) Free Fall Sensor Hard Drive PRIMARY BATTERY:9-cell 85Whr Lithium Ion battery OPTICAL DRIVE: Internal Blu-Ray ROM (Blu-Ray read, DVD and CD read Write) Optical Drive GRAPHICS CARD: 1GB ATI® Radeon™ HD 4670 graphics card WIRELESS CONNECTIVITY: Dell Wireless 1397 Mini Card (802.11 b/g) BLUETOOTH: Dell Wireless 370 Bluetooth Module According to these links the RadeonHD driver is experimental: http://wiki.x.org/wiki/radeon http://wiki.x.org/wiki/radeonhd%3Aexperimental_3D Does anyone have experience with this driver, or better yet, this laptop? Shall I buy or shall I shy away from it? -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
